Vaguely
she remembered his face.
His
beautiful, chiseled face. His piercing eyes, twinkling like the
stars. The smile-lines etched around his mouth. The shadow of a
smile. It haunted her. He haunted her, and didn't he know it, the
bastard. She stared at her spaghetti. It stared back at her. She
twisted her fork around in it until there was enough of the
raw-tasting noodles on the fork to make for a substantial bite. Then
she brought it to her mouth and carefully enveloped the bunch of
stringy noodles in her lipsticked lips, resting the fork back in the
bowl.
She was
a broken woman. He was an angry man. But it wasn't always like that,
she told herself. She remembered the first time she noticed him. It
wasn't the first time she met him, they were neighbors. But she never
saw him before then, never really looked. It was in the supermarket,
when she wore white clothes and lived in a run-down studio apartment,
teaching yoga to a class of fourteen women and a cat. She was buying
microwave popcorn, he was buying a blue-boxed bran-based cereal. She
crashed into him, her long embroidered white skirt getting caught on
his pointy black shoe, and they fell on to the shiny-plastic orange
tiles in a pile. She laughed and apologized, and he watched her. They
tried to get up together, and she hit her head on his elbow, and she
fell to the floor again in a giggling heap, clutching her microwave
popcorn to her chest. He held on to the rack on which there sat miles
upon miles of super-soaking, rash-preventing, brightly colored diaper
packets, and hauled himself up. He held out a hand, but noticed her
holding on to her packets of popcorn, one in each hand (and one on
the floor).
She felt
a familiar tingle at the nape of her neck as she watched her
spaghetti. He had leaned down, held her gently by the waist as if she
were a were a fragile object, pristine but breakable, and picked her
up. They didn't move for a while. She could feel his hands now,
holding her gently, she could hear him breathing into her ear. Her
hands shook as she pushed back her chair, her lower lip trembled as
she put the half eaten spaghetti in the rusted sink. She tried to
walk fast, move fast, think fast, and it frustrated her that she
couldn't.
He was
just a man. She had been with so many men. She had been with complete
monsters, and they didn't scar her for life; she had been with
angels, and she barely remembered them. But it was different with
him. With him, it was meant to be. She felt it in her fingers when he
held her hand. She felt it when she traced patterns (the leaf-like
veins that you see on a dragonfly wing) on his untrimmed chest. She
felt it in her lips when he kissed her. It was the kind of feeling
that doesn't go away, the kind of throbbing inside you that floats
along with you no matter where you try to go. She couldn't be without
him, and he couldn't be without her, but it couldn't go on. They hurt
each other. So he left, she reasoned. I know it was the right thing
to do. I would have left sooner or later. This high-ceilinged
apartment that was too big for one person, and too small for two.
It was a
mature relationship.
Maybe
those just aren't for me, she told the sink quietly. She eased
herself down to the floor, and held her legs tightly to her chest, as
if afraid they might try to escape. Maybe there's something wrong
with me. Maybe I ask for intimacy but I can't really handle it. Maybe
I was too immature for a relationship like that. But he was too. She
remembered the forts they built out of pillows on the ridiculously
large bed. How they walked next to the ocean and went into the water
every single time they were there, no matter what clothes they were
wearing, or what the weather was like, or where they had to go. She
forced a smile out of herself remembering how they jigged in fancy
restaurants and hid under the table if they encountered people they
knew.
They
were good together. Outside, in the real world, they needed each
other to function. To eat with the right spoon and not make terrible
a faux pas around his boss, he needed her. She couldn't cross a road.
He couldn't buy condoms without going a delicate shade of pink and
stuttering. She couldn't decide what cocktail to order in nightclubs,
and she always hated whatever she chose. But when they were alone,
they were quieter. They made more mistakes, and accepted them less.
When they were alone, they cuddled, they kissed and they touched,
they occupied little space together and told each other everything,
everything that they could think of. They wiped each others' tears,
and they made each other cry. He knew exactly where it hurt, and he
drove the point home. She retaliated, silently but violently. She
screamed. He muffled his own tears into a pillow. But he never lay a
hand on her, never hurt her physically. She appreciated that. Still,
she whispered into her knees. It had to end, she stressed. It
couldn't possibly go on like that. It was killing me, she murmured,
and her knees understood. They sympathized. She stood up, encouraged,
and decided to wash her immaculately clean hands again.
Everything
was slow. The water in the tap was slower than usual. The window
behind the sink was grimy, and the single fly that rested on the
ledge was slow. Too slow. Was it dead? She wondered if she should
touch it. She decided against it, and put out a single finger, the
nail bitten down brutally, to touch it. It buzzed with a start and
fluttered around her head, confused. It upset her. I'm sorry, she
said loudly to the fly. I'm sorry! She told it angrily, and walked
out of the gloomy kitchen and dining area to her bedroom, a mere six
steps away. She didn't bother to change out of her simple gray shirt,
much too big for her now. She simply stepped out of the shabby pants
she had been wearing for two days, and daintily stepped into her
unmade bed. She stared at the beautiful painting of a dragonfly on
the wall in front of her. She traced the intricate patterns she saw
on the wings on her arm. It tickled her. She imagined drawing those
patterns on his arm instead of her own. On his untrimmed chest. On
his stubbly face. His regal neck. On his large feet. She loved him,
but she had let him go. Honest to god, she had. As long as letting go
could encompass dreaming of tracing dragonfly-wing tattoos on his
awkwardly manly body.
She lay
there, on the ridiculously large bed in the high-ceilinged apartment
too big for a single person (but too small for two), and looked out
of the grimy bedroom window. She looked for a long time. Eventually
the stars came out, and one of them moved very fast. A shooting star!
Her ends of her lipsticked lips curled up in the shadow of a smile.
They had always wished on shooting stars. It was their thing. So she
closed her eyes, and wished to herself that she could stop loving
him, but wished to the star that he was thinking of her. She didn't
want much, see.
Somewhere
not too far away, a young man stopped his car on the side of a
bustling, well-lit street. He had seen the shooting star too. He
looked at the reddened skin on his wrist, gently touching a fairly
recent tattoo, black upon his olive skin. A large dragonfly, with the
most exquisite wings sat upon his hand. His cynical-looking eyes
softened up for a minute. His trembling mouth curled up, a perfect
match, the shadow of a smile that had been there often. He shut his
eyes as the shooting star disappeared into the black folds of the
night, and wished that she was thinking of him.